P was here.
When P comes it's always a whirlwind with all her stuff and the animals. :) Twenty trips to the car and back to bring it all in. Well, I guess that is a bit of an exaggeration. She does try to pack light, but it is OK if she doesn't. Having her visit is fun. We play games and watch movies quite frequently, though not as frequently as she would like. With having two children and my weekly tasks, it is harder for me to spend as much time as I or she would like playing games and watching movies.

P also helps out with the children, for which I am quite grateful. J loves her and talks to her about his day, and lets her change him without fussing and wriggling, feed him, cuddle with him. E loves her too. She is very caring about P's recent loss of one of her birds. E also loves doing P's make up. She is not too bad at it, I think. E also likes going for walks with P and Kashi, and giving Kashi his bones. And every morning E wants to know if P is up and if she can go wake her up. Being quiet to let P sleep is hard for her. They each have a special place with her.

A note about the flush toilets. I now carry in my purse small post-it notes, for those stupid wall sensor flush toilets. They adequately cover the sensor, so no toilet flushing occurs while my daughter is sitting on it.

Upon our first encounter with the a fore mentioned flush toilet using the post-it notes, I had to cajole my daughter to use it.

Here I sit on couch with my lap top. It still has Window Millanium instead of the update to Windows XP. The tech friend at P's work had to leave to attend to his daughter's broken leg.

And among other things, P forgot to take the computer home with her. Oh well. Since she's coming at Christmas, we can do something about it than.

Obviously, the fellow who invented automatic flush toilets did not have young ones.

My girl, who's three, does not care for automatic flush toilets. In fact with our last encounter with one, she absolutely refused to use it. I tried to cover the sensor, but the paper fell. When the sensor's on the wall, it's rather hard to cover it up. The toilet flushed and she started to cry that she didn't have to go. We tried another toilet, but the stupid thing flushed on us too. We ended up leaving, no one having used a toilet, and me very annoyed. I didn't want to have to clean up an accident.

If there have to be automatic flush toilets, they should at least be the kind with the sensor away from the wall.

I had my first (and last) craft fair at Elm Terrace Gardens on Saturday. I sold nothing, save one note card to my 8 year old cousin for a $1.00. I had available to buy, plain and matted prints, some framed prints, note cards, and greeting cards. Many came by and said that I had beautiful photos, but no one felt led to buy anything.

I thought that at least something would sell. But no. I don't count the note card R bought. I did learn that craft fairs at retirement communities are not the place to sell prints. I should have had my photos printed on fabric and made into pillow covers. Then I would have made some money.

I need to find art venues. I want to try selling at local stores and online, too. We'll see how it goes.

I was reading in my Bible a couple of weeks ago and started to cry from conviction. E, who was in the room entertaining herself by lining up books on my bed, stopped, turned and asked, " Mommy why are you crying?" I replied, "Because I'm not doing what God wants me to do." As she went back to arranging, she simply said, "God will keep you safe."

I took her in my arms and thanked her for caring about Mommy. I got a big E hug, which can melt any heart.

I have been thinking lately about my faith and my walk with Christ. I have felt that something has been missing, and I didn’t know what to do about it. I finally decided that besides studying the Bible much better and more than I have been, I might try getting to know Jesus better. So I pulled my The Jesus I Never Knew book off my shelf. (P has asked me to read it with her, and I haven’t been ready to until now.)

Right now I was reading about the birth of Jesus and was quite taken aback by the account in Revelation 12:1-6. Yes, there is an account in that book.

" 1 A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. 2 She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. 3 Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads. 4 His tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born. 5 She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne. 6 The woman fled into the desert to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days."

Now, I have never given a lot of thought to Revelation, for it is quite a different sort of book. I have read it but have never taken the time to understand it very well. That passage depicts Christ’s birth, but I am pretty sure that when I search through the Christmas cards this season, that is one scene I won’t find. Yancey writes “in daily life two parallel histories occur simultaneously, one on earth and one in heaven. Revelation, however, views them together, allowing a quick look behind the scenes.” It was quite amazing to learn that Revelation gave me a parallel look at the two worlds. I have always believed that Satan is at work in this world but never viewed it like that and didn’t realize that Revelation did.

If you go on to read in chapter 12, you come to this passage.

"13 When the dragon saw that he had been hurled to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. 14 The woman was given the two wings of a great eagle, so that she might fly to the place prepared for her in the desert, where she would be taken care of for a time, times and half a time, out of the serpent's reach. 15 Then from his mouth the serpent spewed water like a river, to overtake the woman and sweep her away with the torrent. 16 But the earth helped the woman by opening its mouth and swallowing the river that the dragon had spewed out of his mouth. 17 Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to make war against the rest of her offspring—those who obey God's commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus."

Again, since I haven’t studied this book, I found a passage new to me. I was most taken with verse 17. I am counted among her offspring, which puts me at war with that dragon. I sat and thought on that for about 5 seconds, and decided I needed to share what I just
learned.

Now what have I just learned? And how will it help me to grow? That is something else I recently read. I learn and I grow. Learning is taking in new information, but growing is changing whom I am and becoming something more. Hopefully closer to whom God wants me to be. If we are Christians, we should always be striving to be more like Christ. We should not be stagnant. And I think that has been my problem. I have been stagnant. I haven’t been growing, and it has left me feeling dispassionate about my faith. That is certainly not how God wants me. What good am I than?

Back to what I learned. Revelation may be a strange book, but I still need to study it, for it is relevant to my life and very applicable. Christ entered this world with Satan chasing after Him, and since Satan has no sway over Jesus, he tries his wiles on us, Christ’s followers. And yes, he does find those who can be tempted into sin.

How will I grow? A starting point is to oil my armor and stand alert.

Right now I am sitting in my basement, our future family room, in front of our pellet stove in a recliner typing on my blog. The stove is kicking out some heat ,and my feet are getting toasty.

The "family room" is currently the middle portion of our basement and still looks like a basement. It has miscellaneous items that have no other home. It also presently has clothes hanging in it, which of course are dry and need my attention.

Did I mention that it's getting toasty? Well, I might actually need to back up. I'd say the stove is doing it's job.

I guess I'd better tackle the clothes. But I also can say that I added more clothesline so that I can hang all my clothes at once this winter down here instead of in shifts, like last year. More clothesline also means more space taken up on wash day. Which means less room in our family room, since that is the location of the new line.

E has done it. She has gone too far with ketchup. I had meatloaf for lunch, so I had the ketchup out. J is eating stew. E is having PB&J with apple slices. She claimed she needed ketchup. So, I gave her a blob. Do you want to guess what she dipped in that ketchup? Her apple. Yep, she just dipped it right in there. And then she did it again. And again. Apparently her taste buds don't find that offensive. Mine, however, have a problem with that.

I called my dad, since he puts ketchup on far more foods than most people I know. He said he would have to try that too.

I still say NO, THANK YOU!

An aside: My previous post and this post have been written at the kitchen table with nothing hooked to the computer. My dear friend P took pity on my attachment to electricity and bought me a battery.

Almost every morning I awaken to "The Call of The Elisabeth." It starts slow and quiet. As time progresses, it intensifies until I must ignore it no longer. MOM - MY can be heard for miles around.

My child has held fast to one rule, regardless that this one rule has been dissolved upon her being potty trained. "You must stay in bed when you wake up." It has never been a rule that needed enforcing, and now I can not convince her to give it up. Every morning and every nap time she wakes and sits in her bed and calls for me. If I don't appear, she calls for Daddy. Why she refuses to give up this rule is beyond me. Since she now wears underpants, the staying in bed rule has been done away with. When she wakes up and has to go potty, I want her to get up and go. But she hasn't quite caught on yet.

I will say, however, that although she called for me for probably a half hour this morning, she was dry when I took off her diaper.

Today I scanned in the remaining photos I wanted from my trip to Yellowstone National Park. I am desperately getting ready for my big debut at ETG's Christmas Craft Bazaar. I now have to finish editing my photos, upload them to Winkflash, and order them. Than decide how much I want to sell them for. I do have some other photos that I want to look for that would be good to have on display. I also need to go to a craft store to buy mattes for some of them.

I am also wondering who I may get to help in the threes room for MOPPETS on Tuesday. There still are no permanent workers in there. Is five hours a month too much to ask?

Oh, by the way, I was able to get all that scanning done, because E went to a friend's house to play and eat lunch. That was a fun treat for her and a blessing for me.

I am trying to be thankful for this laptop. Although I am very thankful for it, it hasn't quite lived up to my expectations yet. It can with a little help.

It's main problem is the archaic operating system, Windows Millennium Edition. It doesn't support much anymore. One thing I was hoping to do with it was watch online shows in the living room. FOX is not compatible with ME, and when I tried to watch CBS, the show kept jumping. I am hoping I just need to update the players on the laptop. I haven't tried NBC or ABC. Of course those channels have the dumb shows anyway.

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On a different topic I wholly believe that it should not be this humid on the 19th of October. I am ready for long sleeves, hot cocoa, fires and s'mores. Instead, I am in shorts, a t-shirt, and flip-lops, and all the fan are running! What's going on?

I am writing this post on my new laptop. If you go to P's blog, you will be able to read about some of my trying-to-log-onto-the-Internet-using-my-wireless-router woes.

I will say that I am very thankful for tech support person, Maria, at Verizon, because she saw what none of the other 5 tech people saw. The wrong setting checked on my router. Even the guy from D-Link didn't notice it. And I also have to say, she didn't ask me to configure my adapter one more time, since the last 15 times should have done the trick.

Anyway, I can now browse the Internet, watch online TV shows, or trounce P at scrabble all from the comfy spot on my couch or bed, or anywhere else I desire since I am now wireless, as long as it is near a power source. For although I am wireless in the Internet arena, I am still attached to the electricity source until I buy a battery.

Here's a funny story.

My friend P came a while ago for a visit. She brought along her laptop, which has wireless capability. She lamented that we don't have a wireless router, so she could use the Internet from our living room, instead of crawling in our computer cabinet to hook up to our router with an Ethernet cable. Not only is wireless good for when P visits, I acquired my sister's old laptop with wireless capability.

P offered to buy us a router. She was all set to, but was waiting for me to give her the OK. When I did, the site was idle for too long and closed. Just this morning we were discussing it again and decided I would call Verizon first.

Well, I finally got around to calling Verizon to see if the router she suggested was compatible with our system. The tech asked why I wanted one. I explained that I wanted wireless capability. He said that we probably already had a wireless router and asked when we got our service. he than did some checking and confirmed that indeed we had a wireless router. He than connected me with tech support, who proceeded to set up our wireless environment.

So, now with nothing but a phone call, we are wireless!

Now I just need a power cord and AC adaptor for the laptop.

Sometimes having children is a blessing, but sometimes it feels like a curse.

I think E is finally on the road to potty training. Earlier last week, underwear was the topic of conversation, and she wanted to wear some. I told her that she needed to use the toilet when she had to go potty. And if she kept her diaper dry, she could wear them.

She has consistently gone more times in the potty than her diaper in a day. She still has to have a diaper change now and then, but it has been better. We also bought her pull-ups, which is good too (more like underwear.) She can go to the bathroom and now pull her pull-up back on herself.

J continues to make his rounds doing his frog impression. He is an active little almost 10 month old. He still loudly insists on his food, likes his Cheerios, and still doesn't so much care to drink from a bottle or cup.

Today was our first day of MOPS. I felt it was quite chaotic. Probably because I wasn't as prepared as I should have been, I was late getting to church, and it was the first day and things crept up.

Hopefully, our next meeting will be better.

Tonight G and I are going to a Bible study. And I hope it is actually a Bible study and not just a time to get together and swap stories, or check out what the latest Christian author wrote, or ways that we can help ourselves get better at something. Because frankly, I can swap stories with other moms at MOPS, I can read a book on my own, and I just can't help myself. I need God and His word.

The word of God is unchanging, yet new every time I read it. It's a great mystery that I want to know better. I want to hear how God changes others when they read it. I have difficulty right now taking time to read on my own and want to be held accountable.

G and I and my parents are going to a Phillies game on Wednesday! I am very excited. Our seats are right behind the visiting dugout. I will be able to touch it. We have never had seats that good before. And to make it better, they are free. G got them from a client at work. We made sure to let him know that we would take any other tickets that he didn't need.

I am also looking forward to the game, because we haven't done much in the way of outings with my parents. So, I will enjoy going out with them.

We also have a VIP parking pass.

Alas, I was suppose to write more on my last post, but I never got around to it. And now I don't know what I was going to write.

Let's see in the past month . . . (in no particular order.)

I resigned from Creative Memories. I didn't have the required $500 is sales, and I wasn't going to charge it to my own credit card. And I decided it wasn't for me. I feel very relieved.

I am starting to print my photos as cards to sell. I have two done so far, one I just picked up today.

E had her third birthday. We had family over for burgers and corn on the cob. E wanted to play with everything, so gift opening took awhile. I'd say her favorite was a dollar store purchase.

J does his frog impersonation quite well now. I think he will never actually crawl, just leap about.

E had her first dentist visit, at which she did very well. It was also discovered that her binkie sucking is narrowing her upper jaw, so it's bye bye binkie. I was thinking that she only sucks it at nap and bedtime, but then I thought about how long of a time that actually is. Yeah, it needs to go. She is three, now. She picked the day she will say goodbye to it forever - Saturday, August 25th. We also picked a day to say goodbye to binkie for naptime, too. That was last Thursday. She's not doing to bad without it, though she still asks for it.

We went to a local carnival. E rode the kiddie rides. She and I went on the carousel, where she rode the horse this time. Before when I'd take her on, we would have to sit on the nonmoving sled. This time she rode a moving horse, and I didn't even have to stand next to her. I sat on the sled behind her. She liked the giant slide the most I think, because as soon as we got to the bottom, she wanted to do it again. She also got to play the lollipop game. Pick a lollipop out of the board, if it has a mark on it the stick you get a prize. She was just happy with the lollipop. G and I saw one of our high school English teachers. We chatted for a bit. She liked seeing our children. For being out so late, the kids did great. They didn't get to bed until after 10:30, though it didn't seem to affect them too adversely the next day.

We have had stinking hot and humid weather for ever. But I can also say that it has finally rained off and on for over 24 hours. Mostly on yesterday and mostly misty today. I am tired of watering.

We may have found the trick to helping our daughter eat in a timely manner. We moved the bird clock to a spot that she can see. We pick a bird and tell her that she has until the big hand reaches that bird to finish her meal. It has been working. Yeah.

Now on the other hand, we have J who yells at you the second his food isn't making its way to his mouth. And the boy doesn't stop. We cut him off. He still won't take a bottle. He mostly chews on it. He won't take a sippy cup either. I am trying to teach him the sign for more, to save our eardrums.

I am working on MOPPETS stuff for September. We still need workers, and I am changing some things, so I need to get that organized. I spoke in church yesterday about MOPPETS and was nervous. I don't like feeling nervous. Apparently even thinking and writing about it brings back nervous feelings. Yuck.

I guess that does it for now.

We got back from the cabin on Sunday. In honor of P, here are photos of some moss I found.

















The kids and I went up Tuesday afternoon, and G came up after work.



He came home Thursday to do some window repairs.

We are having a fun summer. Here is a photo of the E from last night. We walked to a local ice cream place, and E sure did enjoy her "pink" ice cream.






















J is doing great. He is "crawling," which means he pulls himself with his arms and supplements with his toes, mostly just his right ones. He is slowly adding the use of his knees. He does get on his knees and rock. He has started to grab onto the side of his crib and pull himself up. He then proceeds to suck on it.

We don't belong to the local pool, but we have a baby pool that E enjoys greatly. Although I put my foot in gingerly, for the water is quite cold, she gets right in and starts playing.

It has been extremely humid yesterday and today. I am mighty glad for AC. On our street we are one of a few houses that has central air. I feel somewhat privileged.